Bloody Spam

For about a year now, I’ve received regular emails intended for a bunch of doctors. I own several domains and somehow, they believe that one of their colleagues holds an email address with one of them.

The wrong email address has obviously been added to a distribution list. These things happen- people make mistakes.

The emails I’m receiving are sent by people with @fortishospitals.in email addresses. I ignored the first couple of emails but when I realised that they weren’t going to stop any time soon, I replied to the sender to ask that they remove my email address that was being included. I didn’t get a reply so when I received another group email from a different doctor, I located an administrative email address from the Fortis Hospitals website and sent an email, just briefly explaining that I was receiving group emails in error. I didn’t get a reply.

When I next received an email from yet another sender, I ‘replied to all’ and not so politely explained that I would like my email address removed from their distribution list. I may have suggested that they were all a bunch of fuckwits- I don’t remember now.

This time, I did get a reply. The reply was from one doctor and simply said “charming”.

The next email I received was responded to with something along the lines of “further emails received are considered as spam and that by sending any further emails, you agree that I am able to use your email addresses as I wish.

The emails I receive from Fortis Hospitals are generally quite dull and usually include details of lectures or progress in a particular medical field. Still, it would be nice if someone could just acknowledge my request and remove my email address.

Here’s the most recent email I received, which was a couple of days ago:

Dear All,

Good afternoon.

To encourage academics and research, the management of Fortis Healthcare Ltd. has set up a Core Committee for Academics and Research at Fortis Escorts. This team is led by Dr. Upendra Xxxx (Dean) and included Dr. Alok Xxxxxxxxxx (Head-Training) and Ms. Priyadarshini Xxxxxxx (Chief Clinical Research & Ethics Coordinator). The focus of this committee is to help all Fortis Hospitals across the country to develop academics and research at their respective units as well as ensure contribution from all Fortis Hospitals towards the work being done by the Core Committee.

Your valuable contributions in terms of articles, case reports, interesting clinical cases etc. for Fortis Medical Journal which is published quarterly need to be sent via e-mail to Dr. Alok Xxxxxxxxxx (+91-XXXXXXXXXX) on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@fortishealthcare.com and mark a copy to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@fortishospitals.in.

At the bottom of the email, a disclaimer says that I should notify the sender immediately if I’m not the intended recipient. I’m way past that and can’t be bothered making the effort and wasting my time trying to ask that I don’t get emailed by mistake any more.

Here’s what I’ve done.

The email address that is included in their distribution list is now set to forward emails sent to it to a bunch of other email addresses. These other email addresses are obtained from the most recent email and from contact information that I’ve found on the internet; including email addresses of some senior figures at Fortis Hospitals. I’d estimate that there must be nearly 100 email addresses that will receive forwarded emails.

My hope is that other employees of Fortis Hospitals will get fed up with receiving my spam and eventually make sure that my email address is removed from their stupid distribution list.

If the spam emails continue, I will start registering my email address with as many dodgy looking websites as I can. I will scour the internet for porn and scam websites, just so that I can register my email address and get loads of shit sent to it, which will in turn be forwarded to 100 or so Fortis Hospitals employees. Only once I receive an apology and a guarantee that my email address has been removed from their distribution list, will I delete my email address and any forwards associated with it. I was tempted to post the email address in this post, but I’ll refrain from that for now- if even a fraction of the visitors to Ninja Hedgehog were to start emailing it or using it to sign up to things online, it would cause chaos. It’s worth noting that I haven’t ruled that out as a possibility though.

Fortis Hospitals seems to be a pretty big establishment so I’m surprised at the inability to understand, or even acknowledge, my request, which isn’t an unreasonable one. All I want is for my email address to be removed from their distribution list- surely not all Fortis Hospitals staff can be too incompetent to be able to arrange that? Maybe I could even sue them for harassment or something?

I’m going to email them all a link to this article and let them know that I’ve shared my experience of Fortis Hospitals with a tiny part of the internet. Ninja Hedgehog hardly sees the same amount of visitors as Facebook, but around 5,000 of you come here each month. I wouldn’t want 5,000 people thinking that I couldn’t carry out a very simple request.

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About Ninja Hedgehog

I’m Ninja Hedgehog, the creator of the Ninja Hedgehog website. I've written various things over the years but started Ninja Hedgehog in October 2011. I write about all kind of subjects but will never write about sport. Ever.

Dear Sir,
Good morning. At the outset, please accept my apology for the inconvenience caused to you. I can completely understand and relate with your anguish and frustration. To be honest, this is the first time I have received your e-mail in reply to the e-mail I had sent to my consultants. I would therefore request you to share with me the e-mail address so that I can ensure that it is removed from the distribution list. I will also escalate this to the appropriate authorities in the management on a best effort basis to ensure that no more e-mail’s are sent on the e-mail address you share with me. Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. Please note that I tried sending the above matter in reply to your e-mail but it could not be delivered by Microsoft Exchange.
Awaiting your reply.

I’d like to point out that after failing to receive a response from the senders of some of these emails, I sent an email to enquiries@fortishopsitals.in and webmaster@fortishospitals.in as I was unable to locate any other contact details at the time. Again, I didn’t receive any response.

I appreciate you replying to me so quickly, Dr. Gawad, and I have received your request to remove this post and any associated comments. I regret that I don’t wish to do this.

I also appreciate that you have had the decency to reply to my issue, although it’s unfortunate that it had to be brought to the attention of Fortis Hospitals in this way and that it was your email that I have published, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

However, I am a more than reasonable person so I have removed any personally-identifiable information from the email that I have published above. The main content of the email will remain.

Although you have assured me that my email address has been removed from your distribution list, the email forward will remain in place. If the email address is removed, then this will not pose any problems.

I’ve removed part of your comment which was unnecessarily offensive and quite ridiculous. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion but I don’t see any need to deliberately make stupid statements which have no relevance.